Apex Legends offers a different flavour of “staying alive” to most battle royales out there. On the one hand, the map is small and you’re going up against whole squads at a time, so you’re bound to run into enemies when you least expect it. On the other, the time-to-kill “(TTK) is pretty high in this game, and to assist you in continuing to breathe Respawn Entertainment has provided players with a variety of different healing items, each with their own stats and functions.

Our Apex Legends healing items guide will walk you through how health, armour, and shields work in Apex Legends, before delving into each healing item, with stats on durations, stack sizes, effects, and tips and tricks on how best to use each of them.

Health, armour, and shields in Apex Legends

Though there are eight different Legends to choose from when you start each match, you will always start with (and can only ever reach a maximum of) 100 hit points. This is represented by your Health bar in the bottom-middle of your screen. Pro tip: try to keep this bar from becoming empty.

To help with this, you can boost your defences by equipping Armour items. When you equip Armour, you will gain multiple smaller Shield bars above your Health bar. Each of these Shield bars is worth 25 extra hit points. We go into detail about the different types and qualities of gear in our Apex Legends Armor and Gear guide, but basically: white Armour will provide two Shield bars (50 HP), blue Armour will provide three (75 HP), and purple and gold Armour will provide four (100 HP).

Generally Shields will take damage before Health does, but this is not the case when you’re being damaged by the Ring, which depletes your Health regardless of how much Shields you have. And though Health and Shields do act in a very similar manner, they must be replenished using different Healing Items – as we shall see below.

Apex Legends Healing Items – stats and durations, Ultimate Accelerant

Each of the Healing Items in the below table must take up a different space in your inventory, and so you often have to choose carefully which Healing Items to take with you and which to leave behind. Let’s take a look at the uses, benefits, and drawbacks of each.

Note: We’ve also included the Ultimate Accelerant in this table because, although it does not replenish Health or Shields, it is the only other consumable item in the game and it’d feel left out if we didn’t include it.

Healing Item

Effect

Duration

Drop Stack Size

Max Stack Size

Syringe

Restores 25 Health

5s

2

6

Med Kit

Restores 100 Health

8s

1

3

Shield Cell

Restores 25 Shields

3s

2

6

Shield Battery

Restores 100 Shields

5s

1

3

Phoenix Kit

Restores 100 Health and 100 Shields

10s

1

1

Ultimate Accelerant

Restores 20% Ultimate

7s

1

1

Healing Items tips and tricks

Now, let’s finish up with some important tips and tricks that you can use throughout your matches regarding healing yourself up with the above items.

You can request healing items of your teammates. To do this, open up your “Heal Wheel” by holding down your Heal key, and then hover over an item and hit your Ping key. If it’s a shield item, you’ll say “I need shields!”; if it’s a healing item you’ll say “I need healing!”. Check out our Apex Legends Ping/Communication guide for further info on everything you can use the Ping system for in Apex Legends.

You can move while healing. That’s right, you are not stuck still while healing like you are in games such as Fortnite. This gives you much greater flexibility in when you can take a healing item.

You can slide while healing.This is something not many people have figured out yet, but it’s an amazing aspect of healing in Apex Legends. King’s Canyon is filled with hills and steep declines which you can slide down for seconds on end – often more than enough time to heal up while you’re at it. So why not combine replenishing your Health with moving to a better position?

You can bunny hop while healing. Say what? Yeah, Bunny-hopping is a thing in Apex Legends. Not nearly as effective as it was in Titanfall, but it’s still a situationally useful maneuvre. And you can heal while doing it. Check out our Apex Legends advanced movement guide for more detailed info.

Cancel a heal-in-progress by left-clicking. Important to know in case an enemy sneaks up on you while you’re popping a Phoenix Kit. All you need to do is click, and you’re back in the action.

Take risks while healing, but be ready to cancel if needed. Due to your freedom of movement while healing up, you can feel free to take more risks regarding when to heal. I’ve managed to safely pop a Shield Battery with an enemy only a couple of meters away, because there was a rock between us which I kept circling to avoid fire while healing up.

If you’re Lifeline, you consume Healing Items 25% faster. Yup, that’s Lifeline’s passive ability, and it’s pretty dang useful. For more info on all the Legends and their abilities, be sure to check out our Apex Legends characters guide.

The effectiveness of Shield Batteries/Phoenix Kits is dependent on your Armour type. Shield Batteries and Phoenix Kits will refill your Shields to the maximum amount that your Armour supplies. So if you’ve only got white Armour and two Shield bars, then a Shield Battery is much less valuable than if you had purple/gold Armour. With white Armour, a Shield Battery gives you 50 Health over 5 seconds, whereas two Shield Cells give you 50 Health over 6 seconds – not much of a difference, so you might as well use the latter and save the former until you’ve got better Armour.

Always go for the highest heal potential item. Again due to the added manoeuvrability while healing compared to other battle royales, healing is less dangerous in Apex Legends, which means there’s less reason to go for the quick-acting heals over the lengthier consumables. Much the reverse, in fact. It’s good to have a mix of both quick and slow healing items, but on the whole, you should pick whatever gives you the highest heal potential in the shortest amount of time – Med Kits, Shield Batteries and Phoenix Kits.

That’s everything we’ve got on the various healing items in Apex Legends for now, but be sure to check back for all the latest stats and deets on this crucial aspect of survival in the battlefields of King’s Canyon.